


Strong Hands

by Ashcroft_Writes



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual Male Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Touch-Starved, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashcroft_Writes/pseuds/Ashcroft_Writes
Summary: Making a drunken offer to give Hancock a shoulder massage seemed like a great idea at first, but for Nate, it stirs up powerful inner demons.





	Strong Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! I have a huge damn Hancock/Sole fic I’m writing, and this was going to be a scene in it, but the particulars ended up needing to happen there in a completely different way. Still, after tearing this out, I realized it might make a good one-shot with a little doctoring. It’s actually my first public fanfiction post, so I’m kind of nervous. I hope you enjoy it! I'd really value your comments!
> 
> You can also follow me [@ashcroftwrites](https://ashcroft-writes.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr—I love to make friends and to roll around in Fallout and post apocalyptic fiction, so I'd be thrilled to say hi and to hear what you think!
> 
> Trigger warning: contains moments of a character struggling with PTSD, touch starvation, and his bisexual identity, including implied violence and bullying in his past.

Hancock knocked back another sip of moonshine, laughing at the stars. His tricorn hat was thrown at a careless, jaunty angle, his shirt half undone, his happiness overflowing by the campfire. He was living the dream, riding high on a wave of Brobov’s Best and Mentats like it was his birthday treat.

Nate, lying on the ground opposite, thought the booze tasted like paint thinner. It sat in the stomach even worse. Hancock’s liver was damned impressive—Nate kept wondering why he himself didn’t feel half as drunk yet, no matter how much he forced down. Usually, he was the lightweight.

Being drunk, of course, would make it so much easier not to notice things.

Like that artful way Hancock’s excited hands moved in the firelight.

Or the fact that his black eyes were actually sunshine-warm.

Or that he kept making that happy little smile, all peace and pride. It was the same one he made when they finished a good day’s work helping the helpless and making the tormentors pay. It was like the act was giving him wings and setting him free.

Hancock had winked and offered him a Mentat earlier, an invitation to tag along for the ride. But, Nate had declined. His overwrought brain had enough to sort through—now, as he picked at crunchy, unpleasant weeds, he was reminded of the darker edges of being drawn to someone he couldn’t touch. He remembered that he was a shell of a person, that he certainly couldn’t trust his own feelings. 

Every night, Nate barely slept. Every morning, he got up in shambles, dogged by half-remembered nightmares of fiery skies and frightened screams. Sunsets were becoming bad omens. The Brobov’s Best was supposed to take the edges off the clutch of dread in Nate’s chest before he went to bed tonight. It wasn’t.

The comforting presence of his friend was really what used to keep the darkness back… but even the scraps of that were starting to wear thin. During the nights, in their too-small tent or on a shared mattress, that ghoulishly warm side used to press up against Nate’s in his sleep, a fine reminder that he wasn’t alone. It once soothed him like a lullaby never could. In their first days together, it made Hancock’s sloppy, noseless snores forgivable. Nate had never wanted to deeply examine the feeling, but when their happy days of scavenging, joking, and getting nearly killed wound down, he hadn’t feared sleep for a long time. Hadn’t feared dreams.

But now the weather was changing. Now they didn’t really need to set up the tent or group up to keep warm. They slept apart.

Little shoulder brushes were his lot now. Small back pats.

A specter of loneliness was feeding an emptiness in Nate’s heart. When he looked to the future, he saw nothing but an uncertain, deserted Commonwealth waste before him, and he wondered when Hancock would also leave, getting tired of this weird adventure fling, going home. When he looked in his past, he saw countless dead eyes staring back from those who had already gone: Nora, his parents, his old friends, fellow soldiers… and super mutants too, and mercenaries, and settlers he was too late to save.

Huh. Maybe he actually _was_ drunk… but it wasn’t helping him feel any better. He scowled at his bottle, betrayed.

“Well, _I_ think,” Hancock announced, “That _anyone_ could benefit from a new hat if they wanted. But they’d have to feel it, you know? In their heart.”

Nate blinked. He had no idea what they were talking about. He thought it had been something about jerky making. “What? In their heart?”

A deep, sagely nod was his only answer.

And, as Hancock made the motion, it was with a little flinch. Those lean shoulders hunched unevenly.

Nate’s spiraling mind seized on it, because it _just couldn’t stop noticing_ the little things—the man had been stiff when moving his neck for a week now, turning his head in a creaky way, lifting things with pained noises. “Your back still hurtin’?” he slurred, unable to stop himself.

“Well, yeah.” Hancock laughed, eyes crinkling. “’S’what happens when ya take a thousand pounds of ‘lurk to the face, brother.”

Shuddering, Nate remembered the deep-sea queen of the Castle. It was a fight even the galvanized Minutemen barely won. “I… you know…” he mused, and the words piled out like a train wreck. “I’m _real_ good at shoulder massages.” Some tiny part of him under the tide of liquor was horrified. “I am. Really am. I put people to sleep.”

“Wha…? You’re jokin’.” Hancock tilted his glance in a disbelieving skew.

Nate winced. Alright, not only was his offer awkward, but it probably wasn’t even that good. The people he was talking about putting to sleep was just Nora. She’d carried all her tension in her neck and back while on the job. Her hours had been long in that attorney’s firm, so few chances to relax. But Nate had loved her, and he’d learned how to help.

At present, well, now he was just digging himself a hole. But he’d started this, so he had to stick to his… what, his shovel? What was the metaphor?

“Got… got strong fingers,” he said stubbornly. As if to demonstrate, he made squeezing motions at the sky.

Thank goodness Dogmeat was on watch a few feet away. They were such messes.

Hancock swayed. “This a serious offer?”

Stuffing down his instincts that just wanted to touch, to feel warmth under his hands, Nate shrugged nonchalantly. If Hancock was going to trust him with something like this, he couldn’t make it _weird_. “Stupid to let you hurt if it’ll help. You gotta be in top fightin’ condition, man.”

“Huh.” Hancock slumped his chin into his palm thoughtfully. “You know, even this booze hasn’t been loosening my back up. It sucks.”

“Makes sense.” Nate nodded from his sprawl in the grass. “With everything we’re doing in the day… you’re just winding your muscles up again, over and over. Not healing. Need more than… than cheap rotgut relaxers.” He forced his heart down. _Same for me too, I guess_.

A long silence filled the campsite. Nate realized perhaps Hancock had lost interest, and that would be the end of it.

But the ghoul suddenly threw his hands in the air, a weary smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Okay! Why not? Get those strong fingers on over here.”

“Mmm?” Nate hadn’t expected it to be that easy. In fact, he’d been bracing himself to stamp down his own dumb disappointment while he got roasted by a quip about terrible pick-up lines. But… well, here he was, wasn’t he? He managed to slump upwards, hauling himself behind Hancock and collapsing into a cross-legged sit. _Don’t get too excited._

His friend’s spine was straight as an arrow. “So, what do I, uh…?”

Nate could feel the static of that body’s presence inches from his palms. His heart beat faster with relief. “Just stay still. Relax if you can, and let me know if something hurts.”

Hancock snickered.

Oh boy. Yeah, Nate knew _just_ what the unsaid joke was. _Something something, foreplay._ This was the disadvantage of being so in synch that they could almost finish each other’s sentences. When he put his hands to the ghoul’s back, into that aura of warmth and presence, he sighed. The thick red cloth had made him realize the jokes were about to get worse. “You should take the coat off. It’s kind of in the way.”

“Gotta strip down to get down. I like it.” The frock fell into an obedient little heap, frayed seams to the sky. Hancock’s chuckles, however, petered out after a few seconds. “Hey. Does my shirt stay on?”

_Uh_. Nate froze, not expecting that. There had been a hangup in the air between them for months, a fear hinted at, only its edges glimpsed. Nate had lived together with brothers-in-arms more than once in his life—nudity, even partial or accidental, tended to happen. But never with Hancock. The man was careful. Very careful.

When washing in the river together, he never removed more than his frock and boots. He did his laundry while he still wore it, airing out while walking on the road. He slept with _everything_ on. He changed only in utter privacy. Even in the growing spring heat, every layer remained.

From how the world treated ghouls, Nate suspected some bodily—Concerns? Shame?—was inevitable, no matter the swagger of the man.

So the question of the shirt, presenting the option, it was trust. And, it made Nate remember—he really had given these massages to Nora with her beautiful, soft shoulders bared.

He bit his lip, trying to force down the charged memories.

He wanted to touch skin. He needed to touch skin.

“You can keep it on if that’s more comfortable,” he said instead. “It should be fine.”

It was better for them both. Probably.

And Hancock didn’t move to undress further. He said nothing at all.

Nate tried to ignore his stomach twisting and sinking.

_Now or never._ Hoping the drink didn’t make him clumsier than he remembered, Nate let his fingers descend again, getting the lay of the land. His thumbs gently pressed, judging the tension and thickness of the skin beneath the hand-spun, ruffled cotton. A ghoul’s flesh was markedly different from Nora’s, and Nate started questioning if he really knew what he was doing. Everything was closer to the surface. Those bones could be clearly felt with a firm enough press. The muscles over them were wiry and firm, very little in the way of fat or lining. And the patchwork texture of scars and dips… they were obvious under his fingertips.

Endlessly intriguing.

Nate’s breathing turned shallow.

But a sharp hiss suddenly greeted him as he tested the space where shoulders met vertebrae.

“…Oh. Uh. That’s where it hurts worst?”

“ _Augh_. Yeah.”

Nodding, Nate suffocated his mental whirlwind, just letting his muscles remember their careful work. The cool, hard earth beneath him was stabilizing. Gentle presses turned into circles, small at first, then broad, needing the whole of his hands’ strength. Hancock winced and shifted a few times, breath stuttering with discomfort. But Nate gave careful watch to just how the rest of the man’s back muscles prickled, shifting—noticing if the pain was temporary, if it was becoming too much, if he needed to back off. Slowly, very slowly, the snapping tension underneath started to ease.

“You keep a lot of stress in your upper back,” he said quietly. Hancock sat silent, frame compliant. It was enough to make Nate worry he was having second thoughts, that he was only suffering as an indulgence. “This okay? Tell me when you want me to stop.”

Startling, a sigh rose up into the night, a soft moan. “…Yeah. You know… this… this is good… you don’t gotta stop yet.”

Nate’s heart nearly ceased. He leaned in, not too much, not wanting to be noticed, and he caught a flash of eyes half-lidded and glassy, lips tugged into the barest of smiles. Fire lit up the base of his spine. He ignored it, righting himself. This touching, this contact and warmth… it felt so good as it was, and he didn’t want to ruin it. Wishful imaginings were only that.

At least Hancock was truly relaxed. This _would_ help.

And that did make Nate happy.

The minutes passed, no words spoken. Absorbed in his work, Nate soaked in the blessed sensation of contact like it was sunlight on a deprived flower, feeling easy and free. Campfire smoke and the soft odor of spring caressed his nose. Hancock contentedly drooped.

But all too soon, the man shook his head, snapping out of his trance. “Oh. Hey. I think I actually did go to sleep there for a second.”

Regretful, Nate peeled away, letting his hands throb pleasantly. “Did it help?”

In response, the ghoul lolled his neck on his shoulders, rotating his arms. “Hell yeah. That really did. _Damn_. I don’t even know what to say.” He shifted, looking his friend square in the face—his expression mellow, happy, open. “Thanks. You do repeat performances?”

Nate meant to smile and nod. He truly did. But the way Hancock leaned, their faces were only inches apart, that breath easy and warm, puffing static over skin.

His entire frame locked up, leaving him unable to scoot to an easily-defined boundary.

He’d thought allowing his hands this moment would have eased his body’s contact starvation.

It didn’t. It had made it worse.

Now it was a monumental effort to think of anything other than reaching out again, pulling Hancock into— _calm down, calm down, don’t think like that_ —and his wilder instincts seared at his fingers and heart. The compulsion was electricity on his flesh, freezing his mind, tingling his tongue. The alcohol sloshed in his veins, wearing away what little filters and inhibitions his better judgment screamed for.

The war inside… his eyes stung as it raged, his heart trembling, lonely.

His friend’s dark stare went wide with concern. “Hey. You okay, man?”

“I think,” Nate said, voice wavering, unable to move, unable to look away, feeling drowned. “That I just broke myself. Sorry. I know this is weird. Give me a minute.” He managed to bring up his knees as a shield, resting his face on them so Hancock couldn’t see how badly he’d crashed.

Well. There went not making this awkward.

There was a crunching of dirt and stones under boots, the lilting step of someone who’d had far more alcohol than restraint that night. Hancock’s companionable side lit warmth against Nate’s own, their shoulders pressing together. The hummingbird ticking of Nate’s heart gradually slowed. The storm in his brain ebbed.

And a hand fell on his back, rubbing a slow circle, a faint echo of the comfort Nate had tried to give.

It was just what he needed. Nate didn’t know what to say. He barely had words to articulate how shattered he felt.

“Hey.”

“Hm?” He finally lifted his eyes.

Hancock’s pupils were weighty, twin shadows. “You’ve had a lot of shit happen to you. It’s okay. It ain’t weird to get overloaded now and again.”

Shaking, Nate could say nothing. The horrors of his life? Sure, yes, that had something to do with it: the death, the grief, the constant threat of joining the dead out here. But this specifically? This was about _John Hancock_ , the one bright spot he’d managed to tear from this wasteland, and _god_ , he had no idea what to say if the man asked—

“Do you want to talk about it?” Hancock passed an uneasy breath of air between his thin lips. “I can’t help but notice, brother… sometimes you act like a ghoul about stuff, and it’s… well, I just don’t know what to make of it or how to help you out.”

Knocked so off-kilter, Nate couldn't stop his words from finally breaking through. “Like… a ghoul?”

“Yeah…” Hancock winced. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything. But ghouls… well, look, the world’s given a lot of us a big reason to have a chip on our shoulders. A lot of our kind swing it alone for a long time, getting thrown out of places. It’s better here in the Commonwealth than some parts from what I’ve heard, but it’s still not… great. And I’ve known some people who’ve been cut off from others for so long, or they’ve been hurt so much, that you touch them, and it’s like… like they’ve been smacked. They get all wide-eyed and space out, like they’ve forgotten how lonely they’ve been.”

Nate sucked in a breath of air, brain whirling. He was caught. Yeah. Hancock had looked in his eyes, and he’d _seen_. Shit.

He couldn’t think of any argument to defend himself.

“Sometimes,” Hancock whispered. “I feel that way, too.”

Nate jerked his head high, surprised. “But you’re…”

“A ghoul,” the man said flatly. “And for most people, that’s all they gotta know. But we’re social beasts, right? You. Me. We need people. I honestly think it’s why ghouls go feral, a lot of times. Eventually, being so alone… you just break.”

Nate hugged himself. The wind picked up, kissing his ears, making him curl tighter. Could a non-ghoul go feral? Perhaps yes, in a different way. “ _It’s dangerous to travel the Commonwealth alone, ya know.”_ That’s what Hancock had told him once, so long ago under a shadowed Goodneighbor awning, a devil-may-care look in his eye and a Jet inhaler in one hand. It was no less true now than then.

He leaned into his friend’s side, both glad for it and afraid. “All I can think about,” he confessed in an unsteady whisper, dragging his shame from his core. “Is just reaching out and touching. All the time. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. But I… I’m a soldier, Hancock. I’m a survivor. I’m not supposed to feel like this. I can’t break over the stupidest, smallest things when… when everyone needs me. When Shaun needs me. When you’re depending on me.” He heard his voice crack and was disgusted with himself. “I mean, the world died, my family died, and I somehow lived, and how am I supposed to be strong when I’m like this? I mean, how uncomfortable must that be for you, being around this big scruffy bastard carrying all these guns, getting touchy-feely because he can’t damn well cope?”

He tried to say it as a joke, but he couldn’t hear it in his voice.

And he _hated_ it. Hated _himself_ in that moment. He was so pathetic. His trauma, his confused need for intimacy even while he mourned, his inward scorn of how sexual it could be, his pain at even _dealing_ with his sexuality in the wasteland… none of it was what he wanted. And he wasn’t going to lose people over it. Not Hancock, his dearest friend now. Not anyone.

“Touchy-feely? Why would that make _me_ uncomfortable?” Hancock gave an earnest frown.

“I…” Nate shook his head, flexing his fingers, taken aback. But he couldn’t answer. His breathing stoppered up, because now his brain and body _remembered_ as he really thought about the _why_. He remembered the punches slung his way before he’d been taught it wasn’t okay to react to men as he reacted to women. He remembered the looks of disgust thrown in his face as he’d figured out who he was. He remembered the edges of fear in his childhood that he might be beaten, the paranoid jokes from old “friends” past, the posturing to not look _gay_ , don’t be _gay_ , Nate, don’t look like a goddamn f—

“I’ll lose you,” he whispered, heart so loud in his ears he could barely hear anything else.

“ _Why?_ ”

“…I’m… we’re… I mean… we’re both…”

“Guys? Yeah, _I noticed_. So? Are you seriously telling me, that of all the chems in my bag I keep dangling in front of you, the one you need is a goddamn hug? And you won’t ask?”

Nate listed closer, unable to verbally respond. He felt so utterly stupid that he didn’t know why Hancock was even putting up with this conversation. Here he was, pistol-whipping super mutants, crunching radscorpion tails under his boots, surviving a war and a nuclear apocalypse, saving so many lives—but it was the scars in his head that crushed him, every time.

“Alright. Come on.” Hancock stood and patted his shoulders, tugging him upwards. Nate, bleary, followed. Suddenly Hancock’s thin, strong arms wrapped him up in an embrace, one he’d craved for far too many weeks. He could feel everything through his thinning Vault suit: an easy heartbeat against his chest answering his own, the soft breathing of the form in his arms, the firm chin resting on his shoulder, the leathery-soft whisper of ghoul-flesh against his cheek.

It was everything he’d wanted. Nate closed his eyes, letting the stinging tears fall where no one could see.

“This okay?” Hancock whispered, echoing his own words. “Let me know when you want me to stop.”

“Yeah,” Nate managed, hugging tighter, heart pounding. “I just need to be here a minute. Thanks.”

So Hancock gamely hung in there, embrace warm and welcoming, until finally Nate’s heart rate went down, until finally, the prickles of discomfort and self-loathing dispersed into the air like unwanted miasma.

This was okay. This was just the two of them, and the old ghosts didn’t get to be here.

This was okay.

“Wouldn’t do this for just anybody, you know,” Hancock muttered. “But anytime for you. I care about you. Alright?”

Nate didn’t pull away, clinging to his life raft. In that moment of raw honesty, he found himself asking his heart the other questions he’d feared:

_John, do I keep wanting you because I’m messed up and touch-starved and needing, and you’re just here? Or is it because I really think of you like… like how I am… like I how I_ was _… with Nora…?_

With all the screaming in his head finally quiet, he realized he knew the answer.

And that scared him worse than the contact deprivation ever had.

So he pulled the embrace tighter, knowing that when he was sober, he was going to have to be brave again, brave enough to overcome, to look his friend in the eye and tell him the whole truth, the truth that had come to define his world.

_I love you._

_I really, truly love you._

_And I’m never going to let the wastes take you from me._

  
  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sweet Dreams 'Til Sunbeams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17949533) by [beetle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle)




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